


Feast Days and High Holidays

by fawatson



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/pseuds/fawatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A picnic with Olive catches Michael up on his son's life after the divorce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feast Days and High Holidays

**Author's Note:**

> **Originally Posted to:** maryrenaultfics at LiveJournal on 02/04/2008  
>  **Inspired by:** Character Interviews within the "In Their Own Words" challenge.  
>  **Disclaimer:** I don’t own these characters and make no profit from them.  
>  **Author's Note:** The poem Michael quotes from is Rupert Brooke's "The Great Lover". As a well-known WWI poet, I felt sure Michael would know it. I also owe a debt to Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth which informed my thinking.

He swayed slightly as he stood on the platform waiting for her train to arrive. Would she come? She said she would; each time she did. She was very reliable, prided herself on this. But still he wondered and worried. He always worried. He had had a couple, just as a pick-me-up, just to fortify himself. In case. The fingers of his left hand flexed nervously and he took a quick drag from his cigarette before stubbing it out under his foot. Filthy habit. She wouldn’t like that if she saw him with it. She’d give him that look. Oh God! The train was late. _When_ would it arrive? He slumped against a wall, waiting, waiting. 

 

It was a clear beautifully sunny day, one of those rarities of English summer, with only a few high puffy white clouds in a bright blue sky and a gentle breeze that lifted from the hills a few miles away, and carried with it the faint smell of wild roses and thyme. It could have been a steady downpour for all he noticed. Leaning to one side his head bobbed forward and his eyes closed gently in exhaustion. It was the earliest he had been up in weeks. He didn’t notice the train pulling into the station, the hustle and bustle of passengers getting off and leaving the station, others getting onto the train, the call of the platform staff, the whistle of the train and noise of its departure. He did not notice the short dumpy little woman with the heavy picnic basket whose eyes scanned the platform long after everyone else had left. In his stupor he ignored her approach.

 

“Michael?” she said. Her hand settled on his wrist, shaking it. He started suddenly awake. 

 

“Olive, you’re here – you came”. 

 

“Of course. I said I would, just as arranged. How are you? Look I’ve brought us a lovely picnic. I thought as it was such good weather we could go for a nice walk to the castle mound and have a cosy chat”. She spoke in that rushed, slightly breathless way as always, her voice slightly too loud. Carefully Olive ignored the unsteady way Michael straightened, and the beer on his breath as he bent to greet her with a kiss on her cheek. At only 12:00 Noon! Really it was too much, although one mustn’t say so. He was still family after all, no matter the divorce. 

 

“It is very good of you to take the time, Olive”, he said, as with remnants of almost courtly grace, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and picked up the heavy basket. “I am quite well, thank you, and you?” he asked as he led her from the station, down the steps, past the inevitable tubs of thirsty pansies at the entrance. 

 

“Quite well”, she replied. 

 

It took only fifteen minutes to walk to the castle park. Michael gallantly helped Olive over a stile and they chose a quiet more secluded corner of the grounds, well away from the mother whose two children were clambering on the ruin walls, noisily calling insults to each other as they re-enacted some old battle with wooden swords.

 

The capacious picnic basket was opened, revealing its treasures. First the ground cloth, dishes and utensils that came with the hamper. Then packets of sandwiches, carefully wrapped in damp teacloths so they wouldn’t dry out, cheese and biscuits, ripe red tomatoes and crisp green cucumber spears, fruit, and inevitably, slices of rich dark fruitcake made from that old Lethbridge family recipe. A bottle of lemonade for Olive and, blessed mercy, she had brought a bottle of beer for him too! Michael seized it gratefully and rested back against a convenient stump sipping it slowly while Olive set out the feast. She handed him a plate with a selection of food which he set on his lap while he watched her choose her own. 

 

“Good holidays?” he asked sociably. 

 

“Yes it was a lovely Easter”, she agreed, smiling fondly at the memories. “Tiring; it was a long visit, but a good one”. 

 

“Long visit, Olive?” said Michael. “I thought your letter said you only stayed six days.” 

 

“Oh”, she said, blushing as if caught out in something she shouldn’t have done. “Well you know how it is. I’m so used to being alone. I mean I wouldn’t want to be alone for special occasions. ‘Feast days and high holidays’ – well they’re meant for family now aren’t they? It wouldn’t be the same without. Not even if you could be with friends. It wouldn’t be right somehow. But it is tiring, when you’re not used to being around others all the time. I always try to get off to bed early each night so I can get some time to myself, although that can be difficult some visits. Anyway, they’re really only ever short visits. Little and often, that’s my motto. You wear out your welcome after three days, or thereabouts. A good guest comes and goes quickly that’s what I always say.”

 

She looked across at him smiling only to falter as she realised what she had said. Michael’s face was a mask of pain. Feast days and high holidays indeed! What had she said! To a man who had no family to go to. 

 

Michael took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How is Laurie?”

 

“He’s grown a lot this year. Here, I’ve brought a recent photograph.” Olive passed it across. It showed Laurie laughing. His hair was tousled and the gap in the front where he had lost a baby tooth and his permanent one had not yet fully come in was evident in his broad grin. 

 

“I forget just what he was laughing about”, she said. “Some joke or other he’d just played on Lucy I think. He is in the school play this year and has learned a lot of pranks from the other boys. He can be quite a handful sometimes. But he is a lovely lad, Michael, and Lucy is wonderful with him, you know."

 

“Yes I know”. Michael’s eyes looked wistful, and he stroked the side of the photo gently with one finger as he held it. “A beautiful boy.”

 

“He’s doing well in school, too. Of course he’s down for Ray’s old school, regardless, but it is nice to know he’ll have no trouble once he gets there.”

 

“Ray’s school”, Michael said absently, “Yes, of course.”

 

Olive looked a little anxious. “That was what was agreed Michael. You wouldn’t want him to go to your old school now would you?”

 

“God no.” Michael looked horrified. “Whatever gave you that idea, Olive? Awful perverted old priests with their canes. No he’s better off where Ray went; Ray liked the school as I recall.”

 

“It’s a good picture, Olive. Not just of Laurie I mean. Compositionally. Nice balance, good use of light. I meet a lot of photographers in my line of work, after all, so I know what is good. You could have been a professional if you’d wanted you know.”

 

“Oh, thank you.” Olive looked a little taken aback. “But I was never one of those modern women who wanted a career, you know. It’s enough to be taking photos of family and for a hobby when I go walking with my friends.”

 

He looked at her quizzically but dropped the subject. It was odd though. She never had married and liked living alone but professed devotion to family life nonetheless. It didn’t quite add up, but it was none of his business really. He’d always thought Olive was a good enough sort. Certainly she’d accepted the role of go-between readily enough when it was clear Lucy and her parents were adamant he couldn’t visit and only reluctantly agreed to this so he could hear news about Laurie. He was grateful for that. She could have said no and then where would he have been? No one else would have been suitable. 

 

“Here it is”, she said, rather in the tone of someone finally finding the lost keys they had been searching for for hours. She lifted out a dog-eared notebook from the bottom of the basket. “This is what Laurie’s been doing in school, so you can see.” Olive handed it over. 

 

It was the cheap kind of booklet used for practice in schools – not his ‘best book’ for the finished assignments that he would hand in for marking, but the one he practiced writing in or wrote notes in during class. It was full of scribbles and silly doodles, lopsided sums and spelling mistakes. It was typical for a boy Laurie’s age, precious only to the ones who loved him. Michael’s eye was caught by a slightly rude limerick he remembered learning himself at that age. Nothing had changed with boys, it seemed, even though the world looked so different to him now. It was hard to remember the optimism and joy of youth.

 

Good sandwiches,” he said, “ham and cress – my favourite.” 

 

“I remembered how much you like cress,” she said. “I’m good at that sort of thing you know, remembering people’s likes and dislikes, better than Lucy at that really.”

 

He sighed with relief; the ice had been broken and he could ask now. “How is she?”

 

“Very well. Village life suits her. Everyone knows her and she fits in there you know. Town life never really suited her. She doesn’t make friends easily; she’s too shy. Although everyone who meets her likes her, she is such a sweet person. Well you know how that is.” 

 

“Yes”

 

“Of course, it is hard without Ray. Everywhere she goes there are reminders. As the curate, and one of their own who grew up there, he was important to the whole village. She does miss him.”

 

“Yes, I know.” 

 

She looked at him sombrely. “I expect you do.”

 

He looked up, his attention caught suddenly by an unexpected tone in her voice. “Olive – you knew?” he said, his own voice questioning.

 

“Well ...” There was a pause and then a reluctant sounding “yes” came forth as Olive’s face suddenly turned brick red.

 

“Lucy didn’t.”

 

“No and yet you married her, knowing that.”

 

“I thought she did, at the time. She knew Ray and I were great friends. That is why she came to visit me in hospital after I was wounded and sent home, because Ray wrote and asked her to. I thought it meant she knew. And then when news came he’d died of dysentery and she came to me crying, I just thought....” His voice trailed off as he remembered how they had clung to one another, warm reassuring comfort amidst the biting pain of grief and bewildered loneliness of being left behind.

 

“She still doesn’t know, Michael, not about Ray I mean.” That she knew all about Michael went unspoken. 

 

“How is it you did, when Lucy had no idea?”

 

Olive looked hesitant. This was not, after all, the kind of thing a nice woman wanted to think about, but she was also an honest woman and it was a fair question, even if one of those unmentionable things never spoken openly.

 

“Well I am a bit older than Lucy you know, so I saw Ray differently. And when I was at school...”

 

“ _You_ Olive?”

 

“No, _no_! I’m not like _that_. But at my school there were these two teachers who were great friends. There was just a look about them and they spent all their time together. You could see. Anyway, I _saw_ them one day, _you_ know. And then I was a nurse during the war, you know, and that opened my eyes, I can tell you. Ray just had that look sometimes, although he’d clearly made a decision because of his position. He led an _exemplary_ life, you know. Everyone admired him. All the girls were after him but of course he didn’t really need a wife because there was Lucy.” There was a world of meaning, unspoken, in all her ‘you knows’ that Michael could not miss - meaning and, despite all the circumlocutions (or possibly because of them) personal beliefs and damning judgement.

 

“Lucy” Michael began but coughed, and, once started couldn’t seem to stop.

 

As he bent over, his frame shaking with the force of it, Olive reached over to pat him on the shoulders. “That’s a dreadful cough, Michael. You need to take care of yourself.”

 

He smiled briefly. “I had the ‘flu a few weeks ago but I’m better now. It’s just the cough lingering. I’ll be rid of it soon.”

 

“You know Olive I never wanted to hurt Lucy,” he said. I just wanted us to be a family and I tried to make her happy. And it might have lasted if she hadn’t had that miscarriage. Without that she’d never have known.”

 

“You mean it might have lasted if you could have gone on lying to Lucy that all your absences were for work. If she didn’t know sometimes you were with...” Her voice trailed off as she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it, but her sense of injustice on Lucy’s behalf compelled her to add: “If they hadn’t come looking for you because she was in hospital, ill from trying to have your baby.”

 

She looked across at him indignantly, but was shocked to see him sunk into gloom. Tears were streaming down his face and he had one hand thrown over his eyes. Really he was in such a mess. He needed to get a grip on his life, she thought. 

 

“You’re not a very nice woman sometimes Olive”, he said. 

 

“Perhaps not”, she replied with some dignity, "but you cannot have expected me to take your side against Lucy, now could you”. She thought, though, about all the secrets she knew about people she loved, and all the things she could say, all the lives that would be disrupted if she did. All those confidences no one else would ever know. Nice or not, whatever her faults, whatever her limitations, no one had ever accused her of disloyalty and no one ever would.

 

“It is a terrible thing to take a man’s child away from him.” Michael said. “It leaves a man with nothing in the end.” He grimaced, blew his nose hard on his white linen handkerchief, then stood slowly, and head held proudly, one hand stretched out before him, Michael looked her straight in the eyes, reciting: 

 

_"All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,  
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,  
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power,  
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.”_

 

Olive looked downwards, uncomfortable with his obvious misery and last shreds of courage in the face of the complete loss of all he had wanted. Her fingers plucked at the grass beside her. Her gaze caught sight of a ladybird, diligently crawling over the leaves, occasionally falling off, only to try again. It crawled onto her hand, and after making the great trek across, crawled off again, undaunted in its journey. The silence stretched between them as Olive tried in vain to think of something to say. 

 

“He looks a lot like me”, Michael said. 

 

Seizing on the change of topic Olive babbled: “Yes, except for the hair. That is so much like Ray and Lucy. And his build. Lucy often says that from a distance Laurie looks just like the old pictures of Raymond. It is just his face that looks a lot like yours. Of course, you can never really tell with children. They change as they grow up. At some point they look just like their mother only to look completely different and take after their father a few years later.” Olive could hear herself rattling on about friends’ children, comparing them with Laurie, boring him – boring herself - but didn’t know how to stop herself. Oh this was all just so difficult. Finally running out of anything to say she fell silent again and the waiting afternoon once more lay still and heavy between them as Michael sat back down and slumped once more against the tree stump.

 

They were so quiet for so long that a squirrel ventured down from the sheltering oak tree a little way across the clearing, scavenging for food. He was watched closely by a tomcat, half hidden in the nearby shrubbery. The cat’s green eyes glowed hotly and his tail twitched in anticipation as he waited to pounce. Olive’s hand made a swift gesture and the squirrel started and dashed up a tree to safety. She couldn’t bear it when they got hurt. The cat eyed her reproachfully, then turned his back and bent down to wash himself, carefully licking along his stripes and between his legs, then pushing back one paw to rub that tender place behind his ears as he studiously ignored the human who had spoiled his hunt. She couldn’t be sorry for him; he looked too well fed a creature to have needed to catch the squirrel. Somebody’s pet, not unlike her own dear Timmy waiting for her at home, no doubt curled up fast asleep in his favourite chair. 

 

“I hope she lets him have a dog”, Michael said, quite out of the blue. 

 

Olive was startled. “What kind of dog?”

 

He sighed heavily. “Oh it doesn’t matter really; it was just a thought.” The silence fell thick around them once again. 

 

Presently he said: “A proper dog. Not a lapdog or one of those small ankle biters. A real dog. The sort you take on long rambles”. 

 

Once again the silence fell, broken only by Michael’s occasional coughing and, after a while, the chiming of the local church clock. 

 

“I mustn’t miss my train”, said Olive, as she began packing up the picnic basket. She reached for Laurie’s workbook, hesitated, and left it as she finished packing the rest. Quietly Michael slipped it in his inside jacket pocket, along with the photograph. 

 

They walked back to the station without speaking. Michael carried the picnic basket, lighter now, and once again helped her over the stile as they went. They had little in common aside from family and no real sense of connection to help them overcome the awkwardness once news had been exchanged. Their respective sexes divided them. Despite her plain-Jane exterior, Olive was, essentially, a very feminine woman and Michael had always been more comfortable in the company of men.

 

His smile didn’t quite touch his eyes, as he took her hand in farewell, but manners prevailed and he thanked her for the lovely picnic lunch and wished her a safe journey home, before handing her up the step. 

 

“Till next year, Michael”, Olive said, as she put her hand out the window to wave after boarding the train.

 

“Till next year” he agreed.


End file.
